Teresa and Paul's World Tour - 2011

Some of you might remember that I spent a few months living and working in India back in 2004 (mostly in New Delhi, with short side trips to Agra, Jaipur, and Katmandu). So while this trip would bring me back to a few of my favorite places (eg. Taj Mahal, and Amber Fort), I was also looking forward to sharing new experiences with Teresa, and I was intrigued to see how I would feel being back. Because Teresa and I arrived at Delhi International airport at about 3am the roads on the way to our first hotel were pretty quite, and the temperature was pretty bearable, certainly not how I remember mega-metropolis that is New Delhi. The taxi driver, however, wasn't very pleased that we had had the commonsense to pre-pay the cab fare to the hotel (something we'd read about online), so he wasn't going to be able to charge us his normal 'tourist rate'... that was a little more like the India I remember. Once we eventually ventured out in to the city during the day (after a cou...

We've been able to relax for a few days at the Delhi Hyatt (thanks to Paul's many stays at the Hyatt up in Cambridge!), so we've had some time to take a deep breath and revisit our experiences and observations from the Turkey trip.   The overall experience was unexpectedly wonderful.   Unexpected, because we had no idea that Turkey 's countryside would be so beautiful.  I highly recommend a road trip through Turkey .  It's much like the little towns and villages that you would see in Switzerland , with the snow capped mountains in the background and each town dotted with a mosque instead of a chapel.  Then there were the gorgeous and abundant wild flowers in the fields and the sides of the highway.  And, the people in the country side are friendly and sweet and offer to sit and have tea with you often.  Cappadocia   was a contrast of green, lush countryside and other-worldly fairy chimneys for which they are famous.  Add to tha...

In order to stay within our travel budget when we arrived in Turkey, Teresa and I needed to make a decision about whether would travel to Cappadocia or Ephesus. In a perfect world we would have done both, by self-driving a triangle from Istanbul to Ephesus (along the coast), then on to the heart land of Turkey (where Cappadocia is located), and back to Istanbul... however for this trip we needed to make a decision. Both destinations offered different features... we were told Cappadocia offered a strange landscape with underground cities and hot air balloon rides, while Ephesus offered beautiful coastal vistas, and magnificent roman ruins. After much consideration we decided to head to Cappadocia, and as Teresa has mentioned in another blog entry we're glad we did... it was a wonderful adventure. Bill Fuchs (a close friend from New York) asked if he could fly over to Turkey and join us for an impromptu vacation, so the three of us headed off to the local Avis office and hired a car ...

One of my favorite things about being on vacation is the opportunity it gives me to enjoy a good book. And when I'm traveling I especially like to try and find a novel (either fiction or non) that has some theme connected to the place I'm visiting... for example: Max Dangers Adventures as an Expat in Tokyo when traveling to Japan, City of Djinns for journeys to India, and In a sunburned country for wonderful insights in to Australia. So it was that I began the wonderful Ernest Hemingway novel, A moveable feast . For those who might not be acquainted with this wonderful classic, the book is a series of short stories written about Hemingway's experiences in Paris in the 1920's... loosely based on reality, but like most great writers I suspect Hemingway doesn't let reality get in the way of a good story. Ironically there is also connective theme with the recently released Woody Allen movie, called Midnight in Paris, which has some very fun references to both the 192...